Candidate to receive UNESCO recognition as a World Heritage Site, Gallipoli, also known as the Pearl of the Ionian from the name of the wonderful sea on which it juts out, is developed in two parts, the more modern village and the delightful historic center and rich in art and culture.
Absolutely to visit if you have come to Salento to spend your holidays, the historic center of Gallipoli is characterized by its narrow and winding streets, teeming with churches and ancient historical buildings, civil and military, belonging to different cultural eras.
The feature that makes the historic center unique and amazing is that it extends over a small and pretty island completely surrounded by the clear and crystalline sea of Salento and connected to the new part of the city by a bridge teeming with life. A bastion wall, about a kilometer and a half long, entirely surrounds the historic center. Erected after the massacre of Otranto by the Turks, which took place in 1480, the bastion walls had the task of protecting and defending the city from enemy attacks and invasions. Only the lower part of the wall resisted over the years, while the upper one was demolished between 1879 and 1887.